Archive for May, 2007
The anti 9-to-5er: Helene Taylor, San Francisco
My job: I am the president and founder of The Modern Woman’s Divorce Guide. I broke free of the corporate legal cubicle in 2005 and launched the site on January 2, 2007. My industry is law or legal.
What makes my gig anti 9-to-5: I’m a solopreneur, which means I work the split shift, early shift, late shift, and all other shifts. I broke free for autonomy and to pursue my passions, which include empowering women.
What I did in my former 9-to-5 life: I was a family trial lawyer.
How I made the anti 9-to-5 leap: Through savings and investments.
My biggest obstacle: Leaving a guaranteed and desirable salary.
My tips for other cubicle expats: Research your industry, take classes, start your new gig while working your old gig, save, save, save, choose something you love and preferably something you already know, and never give up.
What’s that link again? The Modern Woman’s Divorce Guide website and blog
Read past anti 9-to-5 profiles. Then fill out your own profile to be featured on this site.
May 29th, 2007
Check out this article on craftistas, mompreneurs, and Etsy. I thought I was reading Bust for a second, but no, it was the Seattle Times. Not that I’m complaining. Way to go, hometown paper!
May 29th, 2007
The impending wave of retiring baby boomers — which could spell U.S. workforce shortages — might force companies to offer increasingly flexible work arrangements to stay-at-home moms looking to return to work, according to a new article from PayScale.
Exciting excerpt:
“Employers will have no choice but to be more flexible. They will be offering opportunities for creative scheduling and … opportunities to work at home. There will be a whole restructuring of the way work gets done,” said Roberta Chinsky Matuson, principal of Human Resource Solutions in Northampton, Mass. “That will help moms who want to reenter the work force, but stay at home and work.”
I of course think flexibility is a must, and we’ll take it any way we can get it, asap. But I can’t help but think of all those Rosies flooding the factories during WWII, needed in the workforce only because so many men were in battle. Too bad it might take a major workforce shortage for more companies to offer employment policies that accommodate the fact that people have lives outside the office.
May 25th, 2007
Contrary to what you may have heard, first-time authors usually do not sip champagne from Fluevogs or travel by Learjet. I set the record straight on the business of bookselling in this dishy Mediabistro Q&A, written by the fabulous Rachel Kramer Bussel. See why I chose Seal Press as my publisher, what kind of money we’re talking about when we talk indie press book advances, and how the heck I financed writing a book in the first place. (Subscription required.)
May 25th, 2007
Working wives enjoy lasting marriages, studies show (McClatchy News Service)
Take that, Michael Noer!
Why working less is better for the globe (Alternet.org)
“Americans are working harder than ever before and at a greater cost to the environment. Research suggests that practicing a more simple lifestyle made people happier while using fewer resources.”
Be cool in the cube (Seattle Times)
“Restrain yourself from popping gum, clipping fingernails, cracking knuckles, smacking while eating, singing, drumming fingers or nervous tapping of any kind — or refreshing your cologne.”
Economist believes taxing women less could help everyone (Seattle Times)
“Want to reduce the overall level of income taxes and see more women taking home paychecks? Lower income-tax rates for women while raising them for men, according to Harvard University economist Alberto Alesina, who calls the idea ‘discrimination, the good kind.’”
More companies allowing employees to nap at work (NorthJersey.com)
“An article in the January issue of the Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine says fatigued workers cost employers $136.4 billion each year in health-related ‘LPT,’ or lost productive time. It’s at least part of the reason companies such as British Airways, Nike Inc. and Pizza Hut International allow their workers nap breaks and found productivity increased as a result. A NASA study found that a short nap can boost workers’ output by as much as 34 percent.”
May 23rd, 2007
Here we go! New Jersey (my old stomping ground)represents. The daily Newark Star-Ledger ran a Q&A with me in this Sunday’s paper. I especially love how they call me “rebellious.” Here’s the intro to the piece:
Business Books: Ex-wage slave talks rebellion
It’s an all-too-common scenario that plays out in many offices: The broken-down executive assistant, overworked law clerk, bored beauty editor or cynical manager intently watches the time on her computer screen, while begrudgingly finishing up an assignment she deems mundane and unfulfilling.
It’s a far cry from the visions she had for herself ages ago in her early 20s.
Whether an office gofer or a first-time manager on the rise, women with a creative edge ponder the same question: Is this it?
Newark-born, Livingston-raised and former Manhattan “wage slave” Michelle Goodman took matters into her own hands in the early ’90s and set out on a journey west to mold her career to fit her personality.
With a few cuts and bruises along the way, Goodman, a successful freelancer whose articles have appeared in Salon and the Seattle Times, has survived to tell her story and the stories of other women who have made the transition from work drones to “homepreneurs” and “fempreneurs.”
Goodman’s book, “The Anti 9 to 5 Guide” is an action plan lined with inspiration and humor for women ready to get a side gig or take the permanent leap “outside the cube.”
The Seattle-based author, who interned at The Star-Ledger in the summer of 1989, talked to the newspaper about women’s quest to feed their hunger for creativity, while making money.
You can read the whole (HTML tag-challenged) interview here.
May 21st, 2007
Lifehacker had a fun post a couple days ago on how to effectively work from home, and readers weighed in with their own homepreneurial productivity tips. Keeping a set schedule and creating a fixed office space for yourself were two biggies. So was doing the most onerous part of a project at the start of the workday and later rewarding yourself with an ice cream sundae or some such for a job well done.
I dove deep into this topic in Chapter 5 of the book, which is why I couldn’t resist chiming in with these suggestions on Lifehacker:
1. Have a theme song like Ally McBeal did. (Seriously.) Play it each morning to signal that the workday is about to begin. (Here’s mine.) Cheesy dancing and stupid flannel pajamas optional. Say hello to your new morning ritual.
2. Use caller ID. Never answer when telemarketers, your mother, or procrastinating/lonely freelance friends call. Eventually they will get the hint that you’re working (lo and behold, just like them!) during the day.
3. Cancel your cable TV subscription and unplug the TV during the day. Better yet, get rid of it. Unplug the modem if you can’t stop compulsively checking and responding to email. As a writer who’s tried every procrastinating trick in the book, I’ve absolutely had to go to extremes like this. If you’re not getting anything done, go for a 30 minute walk and try again when you return.
Thanks to Vanessa Carr for pointing me to the LH post.
Update: If you, too, have a get-to-work theme song, won’t you post a link to it in the comments? Let’s have some Monday morning fun…
May 20th, 2007
Confession: Usually five days in NYC has this nature girl clawing at the subway walls, dying to get back to the mountains and sea. Not this time. I soaked up every minute — and enough pizza and corned beef to last me till winter. In fact, I found myself in some trendy little East Village eatery one night with three other Seattleites who were also on VK and I couldn’t stop thinking, “Why are we not eating deli at this very minute?! WHY, GOD, WHY?!” (Needless to say, I was still starving by the time I was done with my fancy $25 French entree.)
For those of you who don’t know, I’m from the Tri-State Area (BonJoviLand, to be exact), which means I had piles of people to visit in NYC: my dad, my high school friends, my college roomies, a couple pals from my bad old days in NY publishing, and on and on and on. I had a blast seeing high school pals Heth and Jed rock the Union Square subway station. I was tickled to reunite with writerpal Beena, who I met at Hedgebrook, and happy to see Seattle expat Nina (sorely missed in the NW!) in her new Brooklyn hood. I was floored when my freaking prom date showed up at one of my readings. (Dude, where’s my corsage?) And I’m ever grateful for all the people who rallied to see me read at the supercool Bluestockings on the Lower East Side and BookCourt in Brooklyn, which made for a fab last chapter of my book tour.
Another highlight of the Big Apple was meeting so many email buddies — from fellow Single Staters Judy McGuire, Rachel Kramer Bussel, and Susan Shapiro to Anti 9-to-5 Guide interviewees Janet Rosen and Heather Swain. I also loved that I could just email a magazine editor I write for (or hope to write for) or an agent recommended to me by a friend and set up a coffee date, literally in a New York minute. I left the city thinking, “Damn, 3000 miles isn’t soooo far… I need to get out of my house more often… I need to come back here twice a year… Must keep a toe in the NY publishing pool…”
What about you? If you’re a freelancer who does a decent chunk of business in another time zone, do you travel periodically to score some face time with your clients and contacts? Does it boost your business when your contacts suddenly see your bright smiling face rather than just your email handle? Inquiring minds wanna know.
May 19th, 2007
Despite harboring a nasty flu and being in such close proximity to our nation’s so-called leader, I had a great time in the District. I visited my sis and bro-in-law and their crazy mutts, all recently relocated to DC from Seattle. And once I came down from my Jewish deli high, I was all about the fresh tacos at the pupuserias in Mt. Pleasant.
In bookland, I finally got to meet the dynamic (roommate) duo Julie Yoder, who set up my kickass Warehouse event,* and Kimberly Burge, who wrote this great piece about The Anti 9-to-5 Guide in Baltimore’s CityPaper. I broke fortune cookies with fellow anti-nine-to-fiver Lynn Thorne, who interviewed me for the Washington Post’s Express earlier this year. And I did a reading-slash-Q&A in John Waters’ hometown, at the ultracool Atomic Pop. There I met the fabulous Abigail Grotke and the women of Fell’s Point Ghost Tours, featured in the book. I also realized that even if just a handful of people show up to a reading, the world won’t slip off its axis and I won’t implode.
*Special thanks to Danomi for selling books. And for providing the tissues and Ibuprofin.
May 19th, 2007
I’m in Washington, DC, now, at my sister’s place, gearing up for tomorrow night’s anti 9-to-5 event. What I’m doing to prepare: gobbling up as much savory Jewish deli as my stomach will allow, walking through Rock Creek Park (it’s gorgeous here; I haven’t been in 15 years and had forgotten!), and napping.
Here’s the schedule for my east coast events. I’ll read a tad from the book, talk about what it’s like to work outside the cube (the good, the bad, and the ugly), and do my best to answer the anti 9-to-5 questions of those in attendance as helpfully yet humorously as possible. I’ll also sign your book, cast, or ass if you so desire.
WASHINGTON, DC
Monday, May 7, 7:30 p.m.
Warehouse
1017-21 7th Street, NW, Washington, DC
(202) 783-3933
Complete with full bar and cafe
BALTIMORE
Wednesday, May 9, 7:00 p.m.
Atomic Books
1100 West 36th Street, Baltimore
(410) 662-4444
NEW YORK
Monday, May 14, 7:00 p.m.
Bluestockings
172 Allen Street, NYC (Lower East Side)
(212) 777-6028
Tuesday, May 15, 7:30 p.m.
BookCourt
163 Court Street, Brooklyn, NY
(718) 875-3677
All events free and open to the public. If you make it, be sure to say hello. I absolutely want to meet you!
May 6th, 2007
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